


Reach Out And Touch Me

by sephmeadowes



Category: Original Work
Genre: College, F/M, Italy, Magic, University, semester abroad, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26275876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sephmeadowes/pseuds/sephmeadowes
Summary: Abigail was excited to spend a semester in Florence, Italy. Until she wasn't.“Do you realize we might be one of the last few people that saw David before he was stolen?”
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)





	Reach Out And Touch Me

Abigail was overjoyed when her VISA went through and her dreams of studying a semester in Italy came true. Her parents had stared warily at the tuition fees for the Lorenzo de’ Medici School but after much begging and a willingness to forego presents for the next decade, she was finally on the plane ride that lasted nearly twelve hours. Her Italian was decent and she was more than grateful for her Venetian grandmother pushing her to speak the language at home. This helped her as she found way her way to the house she was renting with a few other students for the summer.

The heat wasn’t a big shock as she grew up on Californian weather unlike the other girl that came with her who was originally from the East Coast. For their first night, one of their roommates who was a local gave them a small tour of Florence. They avoided the overcrowded tourist spots and had pasta for dinner that tasted heavenly. She was dead on her feet by the time she returned to the house and woke up late the next day.

Marzia greeted her as they had breakfast at the small kitchen. Abigail was munching on a packet of goldfish biscuits while they talked about their majors. It turned out they were the only ones among the group that was majoring in Art. This excited Marzia who told her that she knew somebody that could sneak them late into _Galleria dell’Accademia_ to avoid the tourist crowd the following week. Abigail wasn’t sure how legal what they were doing was but she wasn’t turning down an opportunity to see artwork she’d only ever seen in photos.

Their ‘tour guide’ turned out to be Marzia’s boyfriend who worked security at the academy. Marzia flirted with him extra sweetly as he let them in through a back door and told them they had half an hour before they had to leave. They tried not to squeal in excitement as they looked at the paintings and statues around them. The academy’s biggest tourist attraction was Michelangelo’s David.

She knew that it was nearly seventeen feet tall but it was another to see it on person as it loomed over them, a giant in white marble. She had to crane her head up to see the work Michelangelo so tirelessly put into it for years. There was  o much detail from the veins in his hands, the contours of muscles in his abdomen, and even the…

“David was Jewish,” Marzia murmured. “It seems inaccurate.”

“Renaissance artists didn’t really care too much ab out accuracy in that way,” Abigail tried to explain, forcing herself not to start stammering. “They styled them typically with-”

“Foreskin,” Marzia snickered. “You can say it.”

She was blushing now and she covered her face with her hands. “Stop it.”

The Italian girl bumped her lightly in the side. “So coy. We’ll need to get rid of that while you’re here. Italy can be very romantic.”

“I thought that was France.”

Marzia scoffed. “Yes, but we make up for it in _passion_.”

There was something very odd about talking about passion and romance in front of a giant statue with his bits displayed so Abigail didn’t argue the matter forward and she resolved to see as much of the gallery as she could. They did enjoy themselves and shared a bottle of red wine before bed. Abigail felt like she’d made an actual friend and she was glad for it.

The next morning, Abigail joined Marzia at breakfast and watched the news on the ancient TV they had in the kitchen. Much to the entire country’s shock, Michelangelo’s David was missing. Apparently the statue was no longer at the gallery as security had gone to check on the artwork early in the morning and found the gigantic statue nowhere to be found. Even odder, was that all the other artwork was still there.

“Who could steal that thing?” Marzia questioned. “You see it. It’s massive.”

“And it has to weigh like what over ten thousand pounds?” Abigail went to check on her phone to confirm it. “Over twelve thousand, actually.”

“Even if someone stole that thing, they couldn’t have done it overnight,” Marzia pointed out. “It took forty men in four days to move that statue from Michelangelo's workshop to Palazzo Vecchio and that distance was less than a mile.”

“Well, they didn’t have modern technology. Maybe they used a crane or something?” She sighed. “It could’ve been an inside job.”

“But somebody would notice if you saw something that big being moved.”

“Maybe a lot of people were in on it?” Abigail snorted as she read the headline for an article online. “ _La Nazione_ thinks the gallery sold it off to the black market.”

Marzia was looking through articles on her phone as well. “ _Il Riformista_ says it was the work of aliens.”

“Do you realize we might be one of the last few people that saw David before he was stolen?”

“Well, I hope they find him soon,” The Italian girl frowned. “You can’t hide something that large for too long.”

Their other housemate wasn’t in and that left Abigail and Marzia to work on their coursework and they prepared lunch together. Marzia was stirring a pot of tomato soup when they heard a knock at the front door. Abigail went to greet whoever it was and stopped at the sight of a naked man. She let out a shocked squeak before moving to slam the door closed.

He stopped her by putting his bare foot forward and preventing her from closing the door. She began to panic as they wrestled with the door. She was no match for his strength and he pushed the door open finally making his way inside. Marzia rushed forward with the soup ladle in hand as a weapon. He glared at her and she froze.

Abigail began looking for her phone, hoping to call the police to save them. Realizing she left it in her room, she moved to her door but he blocked her. He was glaring at her now and she raised her fists ready to throw a punch. She had never been in a fight but she wasn’t going down lightly.

He opened his mouth and started speaking to her in rapid fire syllables she could not catch. It sounded similar to Italian but it wasn’t. She stared at him baffled at what he was saying as he began to look more frustrated until Marzia was at her side. She threw the afgan they kept on the couch at the stranger so he could cover himself.

“He’s speaking Latin,” Marzia explained. “Archaic Latin actually. I know enough Classical Latin to get by and he’s saying that he ‘wants to go back and that you caused this’.”

“Caused what?” She turned back to the stranger who’d wrapped the afghan around his waist, thankfully covering his privates. “What did I do to you?”

He spoke again, looking very upset and Marzia took a moment before translating, “He says ‘you should be burned at the stake for practicing the black religion’. What does that even mean?”

Over a decade of Catholic school gave Abigail an understanding. “He’s saying I’m a witch and I used magic on him?”

Marzia said something to him and he n odded. He continued to look very angry.

Abigail sputtered. “I am _not_ a witch.”

He said something again and Marzia told her, “He said that when we were at the gallery last night, you touched the podium he was standing on and when you left he became…real.”

“Real?” She echoed.

With a sinking feeling in her stomach she remembered the stories her Nona used to tell her as a child. How when she was Abigail’s age, she drew her perfect man and he came to life. Then she married him. Abigail had thought her grandmother overtly romantic and making silly stories to entertain her. She didn’t want to entertain the thought that she might’ve been telling her the truth about how she met her grandfather.

Or that Abigail might’ve inherited something from her. But that was insane. Like this stranger in front of them clearly was. They weren’t safe around him and-

He spoke again, slowly. And she tried not to shiver at the familiarity of his glare, the same one she had gazed up at last night. If she looked down, she could trace the veins in his hands and the contours of muscles on his torso she’d so admired. Instead of white marble, he was flesh and bone and that was even worse. He was a touchable beauty now and not nearly seventeen feet tall.

Marzia explained, “He said that he wants you to put him back as was. He doesn’t want to be alive. Well, that’s rather morbid.”

“I don’t know how.”

Her grandparents died a few years ago and her mother had never said anything about this. She had no idea how to turn this man back into stone. She didn’t even know how she did it in the first place. And she tried to remember if she touched anything else in the gallery.

He grabbed her hand in his, firm but not painful. His eyes were a flint grey, one of the few parts of him that wasn’t unlike his old self. He told her something again and even though she couldn’t understand Latin, she had a general idea of what he wanted. _Figure it out_.

Marzia asked him something and he responded, not breaking eye contact with Abigail, “ _David_.”

Abigail gave her housemate a beseeching look. “I don’t know how I did, I swear.”

Marzia, bless her, spluttered for a moment, eyeing David and her in complete shock before she recovered by walking back to the kitchen and finding a bottle of wine. She uncorked it and poured herself a glass.

“I can’t be sober for this.”

She knew exactly how that felt and side stepped David who was stoically glaring at her and accepted a glass from Marzia.

“I knew I should’ve picked Rome instead.”


End file.
